Not sure about the rest of you but I'm begining to feel that people that don't enjoy our hobby of collecting knives..think we are a bunch obssesive folks akin to those going to AA meetings or drug addiction clinics. I can't tell you how many times people have asked me if I have any hobbies and when I tell them I collect custom knives..they look at me like I'm a nut. I try to explain it to them but they always say the same things..."$500 for a knife? does it cut any better than a $20 one"? Burns me up!!!!
My typical retort nowadays is...what is a Rembrandt....? Basically canvas and paint..as far as materials go..maybe $10....BUT collectors pay for the skill of the artisan to put make cheap materials into something unique. No different from a knifemaker, as far as I'm concerned. What does the steel..belts and polishes come to..$50? Then turned into a $1,000 knife. However, the heart and sole as well as the physical and mental skill of the maker/artist is forged and or ground into every blade..making something as unique as fingerprints.
Computers can reproduce a Picasso down to the finest brush stroke..and crank out knife blanks almost to the micrometer in tolerances but it loses something..the spirit of the artisan. No computer can ever duplicate that.
The most I ever spent on a knife was $1,850.00 and I waited 7 years to get it. Not a single day do I regret the purchase. To me it is a Picasso/Rembrandt and the enjoyment I get and the pride of ownership I have cannot be calculated in monetary terms.
So I say this...I have no ludacris addiction..no spendthrift compulsion except for those things that are created/forged by the hand of man into one of our most basic instinctual tools...the knife...and for that I make excuses to no man or woman.
Collect with pride!!
Bpman
My typical retort nowadays is...what is a Rembrandt....? Basically canvas and paint..as far as materials go..maybe $10....BUT collectors pay for the skill of the artisan to put make cheap materials into something unique. No different from a knifemaker, as far as I'm concerned. What does the steel..belts and polishes come to..$50? Then turned into a $1,000 knife. However, the heart and sole as well as the physical and mental skill of the maker/artist is forged and or ground into every blade..making something as unique as fingerprints.
Computers can reproduce a Picasso down to the finest brush stroke..and crank out knife blanks almost to the micrometer in tolerances but it loses something..the spirit of the artisan. No computer can ever duplicate that.
The most I ever spent on a knife was $1,850.00 and I waited 7 years to get it. Not a single day do I regret the purchase. To me it is a Picasso/Rembrandt and the enjoyment I get and the pride of ownership I have cannot be calculated in monetary terms.
So I say this...I have no ludacris addiction..no spendthrift compulsion except for those things that are created/forged by the hand of man into one of our most basic instinctual tools...the knife...and for that I make excuses to no man or woman.
Collect with pride!!
Bpman
. I AM PROUD TO BE A KNIFE COLLECTOR:thumbup: 
